Luka Rocco Magnotta after landing in Montreal following his arrest in Germany in early June.

Photograph by: Montreal Police
, National Post

MONTREAL — Luka Magnotta has filed a motion to keep confidential certain items seized during the investigation that led to his being charged with murder — notably, an interview conducted by two criminologists with a research subject known as "Jimmy."

The criminologists, Christine Bruckert and Colette Parent, both professors at the University of Ottawa whose research centres on the sex industry, also have filed a motion to keep the interview, seized by police, confidential.

Most of Magnotta's case file is sealed, including the search warrant executed at the law offices of Lex Canada in Toronto on June 22, three weeks after Magnotta was arrested at an Internet cafe in Berlin.

Magnotta is charged with brutally killing and dismembering Lin Jun, a Chinese student at Concordia University in Montreal, and posting the gruesome video of the murder online.

But in two separate motions presented in Superior Court on Friday, Magnotta and the professors state their intention to challenge the search warrant on the basis of "confidentiality privilege."

Reached in Toronto, Magnotta's lawyer, Luc Leclair, refused to comment on the motion, or on wether his client is in fact the "Jimmy" that was interviewed for research purposes.

The research was conducted by Adam McLeod, on behalf of Bruckert and Parent.

Magnotta was born Eric Clinton Newman, but is known to have used the alias Jimmy, among others, before undergoing a legal name change in 2006 to officially become Luka Rocco Magnotta.

He went by the name Jimmy when he appeared as a pin-up model in a 2005 issue of Toronto's Fab magazine, and he may also have sought work as an escort using Jimmy as a pseudonym. He got involved in the pornography industry in 2003, appearing in eight films as either Luka or Jimmy.

Bruckert and Parent's work, some of which was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, centred on the sex trade, and together they published several articles and book chapters for which they interviewed sex workers — male, female and transgender — about their lives and working conditions in an attempt to improve their lot and de-stigmatize their work.

They were adamant about strict confidentiality.

For a recent study called "Challenges: Ottawa-area Sex Workers Speak Out," all interviewers had to sign confidentiality agreements, all data was transmitted in person and all electronic data was encrypted. That particular study involved 43 participants, including seven men, recruited by posting flyers at locations known to be frequented by sex workers and advertising on Internet sites used by sex workers.

Neither Bruckert nor Parent would comment Friday on the motion.

But in a written statement, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents Bruckert and Parent, said that the professors' work, "like that of many social and health scientists, depends on pledging and maintaining strict confidentiality to their research subjects. That provides the basis on which researchers can gather information and data to better understand many forms of human behaviour and to provide the basis for appropriate social policy . . . In defending the confidentiality of their research subjects, they are fulfilling their ethical obligations and will continue to do so to the best of their ability."

James Turk, executive director of CAUT, said there's a lot of socially important research that depends on protecting confidentiality, and likened the relationship between university researchers and their subjects to that of investigative journalists seeking to protect the anonymity of their sources. "No privileged relationship, even of solicitor-client or doctor-patient, is absolute and the courts will have to make a decision if there are contending forces — as there are in this case."

Mark Bantey, a prominent media lawyer, said it was the first time he'd heard of university professors arguing their material was "privileged" and therefore confidential.

"What the researchers did was promise confidentiality to their subjects. There's a contract between the researchers and their subjects, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's a privilege," Bantey said. "The approach being taken by the university researchers is novel and will lead to a very interesting judicial debate."

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